On Nov 7, 2007, at 2:14 PM, Bjoern Hoehrmann wrote:
> I do not think that the proposal is the least complex solution to
> what-
> ever problem it attempts to solve (and the point of the question
> was to
> find out what the precise problem is), and I didn't propose any
> specific
> alternative and you did not offer a definition for complex and simple,
> so I can't really answer that.
I do not represent Apple or Webkit, but I think that the idea is for
the HTML to remain unsullied, and that the "special effects" of what
how the page renders, including how it renders over time, belong
naturally in the CSS, since it is the role of CSS to separate
presentational design aspects from the structural and semantic HTML.
The Webkit blog at <http://webkit.org/blog/138/css-animation/> gives
good examples for how the transitions can be used, and they all seem
fairly simple to author. I have a nightly download of Webkit, where
the examples render beautifully. I welcome the ability to have an
HTML element fade/slide/zoom/wipe in or out by simply adding another
style sheet rule to my CSS, or a couple lines of JavaScript that
change the the style in response to other events (like "click").
The full blown animation seems a little less compelling to me (and
the cubic bezier curve for the transition-timing-function seems like
overkill), but I guess it is nice to have it there if I wanted to do
something more complex. The fact that it has a syntax that is similar
to the more useful and easy-to-implement transitions speaks in its
favor. I would likely learn and be familiar with transitions before I
tried to tackle a more complex animation, so the similarity of CSS
animation to CSS transitions would make it a preferable way to
accomplish a somewhat more complex goal.
No Flash object to create and embed or special non-semantic HTML
structures to add to the HTML. The HTML remains the same regardless
of browser support for the additional presentational CSS. Sounds good
to me.